348 APPENDIX. 



the hunting season, may have brought witli tliem tlie rehi- 

 deer from which these horns had been derived. This hypo- 

 thesis may explain the presence of such horns in a spot which 

 no wild rein-deer are known to frequent at present ; but as 

 Kotzebue (p. 219) mentions also the abundance of drift-wood 

 upon the shores of this bay, it is probable that the same cur- 

 rents which brought the wood may have also brought the car- 

 casses of rein-deer, and have stranded them on the shores 

 where their horns were found. 



The agency of the same currents, to which I have referred 

 the drifting of the carcasses of rein-deer into Eschcholtz Bay, 

 •will also equally explain the presence of recent bones of the 

 musk-ox in this bay, on the same shoal, with the bones of ele- 

 phants that had fallen from the cliff. I have already stated 

 that the condition of the skull and horns of a musk-ox, which 

 were brought home with the fossil bones, is so very recent, 

 and differs so essentially from the condition of all the bones of 

 elephants from this place, that it is impossible it can have 

 been buried in the same matrix with them ; for, in such case, 

 all would have been nearly in the same state, either of preser- 

 vation or decay. 



It is stated by Cuvier (Ossemens Fossiles, second edition, 

 vol. iv. p. 165), that a similar doubt is attached to the heads 

 of musk-oxen described by Pallas and Ozeretzkovsky, as found 

 near the mouth of the Ob, and at the embouchure of the 

 Yana, and that there is yet no sufficient proof of the existence 

 of any fossil species of musk-ox that may be considered of the 

 same age with the fossil elephant, or which can be brought in 

 evidence as to the question of the climate of the polar regions 

 when these elephants were living. Of the very few remains 

 of musk-oxen which have yet been found, it does not appear 

 that any have been buried at a great depth. 



There is nothing peculiar to Eschscholtz Bay in the occur- 

 rence of bones of horses witli those of elephants : from the 

 number of localities in which their teeth and bones have been 

 found together, in diluvial deposits, it appears that more than 

 one species of horse was co-extensive with the fossil elephant 

 in its occupation of the ancient surflice of the earth. Wild 



